Wedding Ring (38 page)

“It probably was illegal. I’m assuming he’s not supposed to go to bars.”

Mack switched the cake to the other arm. “You saw him?”

Tessa was silent for a while, as if gauging her own answer. “I saw him leave the house with some of his friends. I followed them, but with no intention of getting out of the car and peering in windows. I promised you I wouldn’t do anything illegal.”

“And?”

“They ended up at a sports bar, one of those chicken wings and billiards places down the road from his mother’s house. When they left, I went inside and talked to the server who had waited on him.”

“And?” he repeated.

“All of them were drinking. Except Robert. She said he made a point of ordering a Coke even when his friends kidded him.”

He felt something very much like relief. Not only because Owens had behaved himself, but because Tessa had not been faced with an opportunity to wreak the revenge she so desperately sought.

“How do you feel about that?” he asked after a moment of digesting the news.

“Disappointed.” She hesitated. “Sorry I am.”

More relief filled him. “Tessa, I’ve come up with a way to make sure Owens stays on the straight and narrow
and
get you out of the action at the same time. Are you willing to listen?”

The sun was sinking behind the mountains to their west. The air was beginning to cool, and a light breeze fanned their faces. As Tessa contemplated his question, Mack wished that on this lovely evening they could get past this quickly, that they could pretend for just this one night that their lives weren’t ruled by the man who had killed their daughter.

“I need to be out of it,” she said at last, surprising him. “But I can’t let go knowing he could kill again.”

“I’ve got a private investigator who’s willing to do the surveillance for us. He has assistants who do this kind of work.”

“It would cost a fortune.”

“It’s not as expensive as your well-being. And the assistants come at a reduced rate. Besides, he owes me, and he knows it. He does most of our investigative work. He owns a summer house on the Chesapeake, courtesy of the firm.”

She stopped walking and turned to him. “You would do this for me?”

He gazed down at her, noted the pinched grooves between her eyes, the tight skin around them. Even without those signs, he knew what this meant to her. “I don’t agree with following Owens. I don’t think we should take the law into our own hands, but I know how important this is to you.”

“The last time you and I were together we as much as said goodbye.”

“Is that what you heard?” He remembered his exact words. He had told her she would have to be the one to push him away. She hadn’t pushed hard enough.

He hoped she hadn’t wanted to.

She took the cake out of his hands. “Every time I go to Manassas, it’s like stepping back in time to the day Kayley died.”

“That’s why you can’t keep it up.”

“I would like it if someone else watched the house. I can’t ask my friends to give up any more time. This would be a blessing.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Thank you.”

He leaned down and kissed her lightly, quickly on the lips.

The food was delicious. They feasted on fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs and sweet corn that was smaller than usual, but delicious anyway. There were platters of fresh tomatoes and icy-cold pickled watermelon rind, casseroles of green beans and baked beans and crowder peas with ham hocks. Helen’s cake was a huge success, and even she seemed pleased by all the compliments and the empty platter at the meal’s end.

From the moment they arrived, Mack fit right in. Tessa watched him talk to everyone, old and young. He played patty-cake and eensy, weensy spider with the babies, swapped stories with a local attorney, listened intently to the opinions of two old farmers who were still—at least theoretically—fighting the Civil War.

He made friends with Cissy immediately, and Tessa could see that her protégé was entranced with him. When the music started in earnest, he stood close to the band and swayed to the sawing of fiddles and picking of banjo strings. There were a total of eight musicians who seemed to move in and out of the action. Tessa counted three guitars, a string bass, two fiddles, a mandolin and a banjo.

She felt physically lighter, despite all the food. Even the thought that Kayley, who had inherited her father’s love of music, would have loved being here tonight didn’t sadden her. She felt a bond with her daughter that had survived the little girl’s death, and for the first time the feeling that went with it was more pleasure than pain.

After she had helped Cissy and her mother-in-law refrigerate leftovers and carry out more pitchers of iced tea and Thermoses of coffee, Tessa joined Mack, who was tapping his foot to a rousing chorus of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

He took her arm as naturally as if the past three years had never happened. She nestled her hip against his and swayed side to side with him.

Zeke, wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and cutoff shorts, was playing the banjo, and while Tessa watched, he picked a complicated solo that drew applause from the gathered crowd. Flushed with pleasure, he grinned and stepped back so the bass player could plunk out a few solo lines.

“I always wanted to do that,” Mack said.

“Why don’t you take lessons?”

“When? In that pregnant pause between ‘we find the defendant’ and ‘not guilty’?”

“Maybe you ought to give yourself a little free time.”

“I will if you will. Why don’t you take up the fiddle? We could form a band.”

She laughed, because they both knew that despite eight painful years of piano lessons with one of Richmond’s finest teachers, she was still only a “Chopsticks” virtuoso.

The band started another selection. “‘Black Mountain Rag,’” Mack said, right before he started to hum along.

“How do you know this stuff?”

“It’s all I listen to when you’re not around.”

“And even when I am.”

“Honey, you married a mountain man.”

Before she could respond, he grabbed her and began to dance her in circles. She threw back her head and laughed as she stumbled and tried to keep up. He was clutching her so close she could feel his denim jeans scrape against her bare leg, feel the hard curve of his hip brush against hers. Her breasts sank against his chest, and her arms circled his neck.

Her breath hovered uncertainly in her lungs, as if she no longer remembered how to expel it. And this wasn’t exertion. No, never that. She recognized desire, the harsh thrust of it that had blindsided her the first time she was ever close to Mack, and she knew it was working its magic again.

She hadn’t felt desire, not like this, for years. She’d only felt anger and sorrow, and a cold, gray wind extinguishing everything she’d felt for him. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she held him closer, clutched him harder against her to bask in his warmth.

They stopped dancing, but he didn’t stop holding her. The sky had grown dark, and he stepped back out of the makeshift circle of light that illuminated the band. Mack wrapped his arms tighter around her, and they swayed together, listening to the fiddle screech and moan, the mandolin trill, Zeke’s banjo weave improvisational counterpoint against the guitar’s melody.

“I feel young again,” he whispered against her hair.

She did, too, as if someone had lifted her from quicksand and deposited her on firm earth. She knew it wouldn’t last, that she would sink again. But just feeling the firm earth for a moment, just knowing it was still there and she might find it again for longer and longer moments, lightened her spirit even more.

“Mom and Gram are enjoying themselves.” She nodded toward them, sitting at the edge of the lights on plastic chairs. Nancy was conversing with Mrs. Claiborne, and Helen had made friends with the ersatz Confederate soldiers. At one point in the evening Tessa had heard the three of them extolling the virtues of Stonewall Jackson.

“How much, do you think?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Enough that they’ll be here a while?”

“I think you’d have to take a bulldozer to Gram to get her away right now.”

“Good. And we can make it back to the house in say, ten minutes?”

She understood where this was going, and her heart beat faster. “Quicker, if we need to.”

“Good. Now watch how I do this.” He pulled her farther from the light. They waited a moment; then he pulled her even farther. In no more than a minute they’d edged far enough away that they were lost in the shadows. Then, taking her hand, Mack started toward the road at a fast clip.

They laughed, taking turns pulling each other along the road, at times playfully chasing each other but enjoying getting caught even more. He pulled her to him each time for long, luxurious kisses, which she returned with fervor. They were home sooner than she’d expected, winded, still laughing, their eyes shining brightly in the light of a crescent moon.

They kissed their way upstairs, taking their time on the old steps. Her dress was unzipped by the time they arrived in her room, and his shirt was unbuttoned. She removed the squash blossom necklace and placed it on the dresser. His arms went around her, and he held her against him. Even through his jeans she could feel the fullness of his erection, and she leaned harder against him and began to sway.

“I have missed you more than you’ll ever know,” he said softly.

She couldn’t talk about the past. For tonight she wanted no past. Just this moment and the moments to come. Not days, and certainly not years. Just moments to help her back into a life that was still too far in the distance.

She turned in his arms. “I want you, Mack.”

He slipped the dress off her shoulders, and it pooled at her feet. The bra was easily dispensed with. She removed his shirt the same way and unsnapped his jeans.

The bed was narrow, but it hardly mattered. They nestled together as only longtime lovers did, so aware of the curves and planes of each other’s body that there was no need to adjust or accommodate. His hands found the familiar places that gave her pleasure, and she responded, kissing the hollow of his neck, the sensitive places of his chest, then lower, as he sighed and moved in response.

Moments later he was inside her, making slow, torturously slow strokes. She was suffused with feeling, a nearly forgotten rush of passion and yearning for completion. She wondered how they had lost this, how she could have pushed him away when she needed to hold him closer.

And then she remembered, like a communication from some faraway land, that she had forgotten to put in her diaphragm.

He mistook her attempted retreat as a shift in response. He moved faster and she was lost in the mindless surge of a body that had too long denied its need. Even as she felt herself falling over the edge of desire, she was gripped by terror.

He came when she did, a powerful, mindless merging of flesh to flesh, seed into womb, hearts beating in matching rhythm.

They lay panting, chest to chest, until she moved away and sat up.

He knew immediately that something was wrong. He gripped her arm so she couldn’t stand. “Tess?”

“We didn’t use birth control.”

He didn’t respond. She turned to look at him. “Did you remember?”

He shook his head. “No, honestly. You were on the pill for so long after…”

She’d gone on the pill after Kayley’s death, terrified to take the chance she might get pregnant again. She’d stopped taking it six months ago, not pleased with the problems she’d encountered. And what had been the point, after all, when their lovemaking had dwindled to almost nothing?

She looked away. “How could we have made a mistake like this?”

“Mistake?”

She got to her feet, shaking off his hand. “What would you call it?”

“I’d call it hopeful.”

“Hopeful?”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Aren’t there worse things in life than having another child together?”

“How can you even talk about another child after everything that happened?”

“We can’t replace Kayley. I don’t want to try. But can’t we affirm that what we had with her was so wonderful, so miraculous, that we want another little girl or boy to bring that joy back into our lives?”

Panic had filled her, and now it overflowed. She couldn’t stop her next words. “I never want another child.”

“Never is a long time. Never is as final as it gets.”

With trembling hands, she slipped back into her dress and turned. A flurry of calculations assured her that the chance she might get pregnant tonight was slim, but she was still overwrought. “When I went off the pill I talked to my gynecologist about getting my tubes tied. That’s how final it is.”

“You didn’t do it?”

“Not yet. We talked about the fall.”

“When were you going to get around to telling me? Afterward?”

She looked away. The conversation with her physician had been casual, the decision unmade, but now, with Mack’s seed inside her, with even the slightest potential for new life blossoming, she couldn’t see any other way. If she wasn’t pregnant because of this mistake, how could she ever take that chance again?